Now that VS 2008 is out of the box, so to speak, it appears that a new era in Windows development is upon us. Language-Integrated Query is one of several game-changing technologies now supported in the Microsoft software kit. Although it is still early and there is a lot of learning to do, LINQ is poised as a whole new way of developing with data.

It is fair to say that the first rush of .NET technology was about catching up with Java, although there was much unique about .NET too. With LINQ, for now, it seems Microsoft has stolen a march on the Java opposition.

I spoke recently with Jason Beres, director of product management at Infragistics, which is one of the major third-parties in the Microsoft market. Beres said people will take LINQ very seriously. “I think it going to be the de facto way to do any real data binding or object access moving forward,” he said.

With the new Microsoft tool kit comes Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Is WPF game changing? That is hard to say. When it was first conceived, the ubiquitous Web interface seemed to be overstressed, and ready to be replaced by a new generation of WPF-based Smart Clients that would use something like WPF. But, before WPF made it too market, AJAX came on strong as a means to give new life to Web interfaces.

This means the plate of companies like Infragistics is pretty full. Infragistics has just rolled out NetAdvantage for WPF 2007, which is compatible with Visual Studio 2008. At the same time, according to Beres, the company has been re-tooling its frameworks around ASP.NET AJAX as well.

For Infragistics and others, Silverlight looms as another alternative interface. Watch for Infragistics and others to provide Silverlight components, especially now that Silverlight 2.0 (which, more than its predecessor, rightly bears the mantle of “WPF/Everywhere”) arrives in its first beta form.

LINQ, WPF and VS 2008 have been primary areas-of-interest for the SearchWindowsDevelopment.com site for some time. We invite you to check out our LINQ VS 2008 pages, and to stay tuned.

RELATED INFORMATION:
> VS 2008 and LINQ Topic Page
> Introducing WPF
> Introduction to Silverlight 1.0

Visual Studio 2005 provides an Web site application template to create AJAX enabled ASP.NET Web sites.

However, when you use Visual Studio 2008, you will not find this template in the New Web site creation templates.  The reason for this is that  Visual Studio 2008, by default creates a .NET Framework 3.5 application.  See the .NET Framework type at the top right section of the window image below.

AJAX is now integrated into the framework.  In Visual Studio 2008 all web sites that are created using .NET Framework 3.5 are AJAX enabled.  You don’t have to create a separate AJAX enabled web pages.

The way you use Master pages has changed in Visual Studio 2008.  Remember, how in Visual Studio 2005 when you add a new Web Form in ASP.NET applications - you get to choose a master page to apply to the Web form.  If you choose to use a Master page - then the page that is added, when you check the HTML code for that page - it is stripped of all the standard HTML tags - only the Page directive and the <asp:Content> tags are available.  This is a Content page.

In Visual Studio there are two types of Web Forms available - Web Form and the Web Content Form. 

The Web Form is a standard Web Form - without the Master page, with its HTML code like a standard HTML page.  Whereas, the Web Content Form is the one to which you can attach a Master page.

The Web Form page also has a MasterPageFile property.  But, if you create a Web Form and then set the MasterPageFile property to link to your Master page you will get a run time error.

Content controls have to be top-level controls in a content page or a nested master page that references a master page.

This is because content pages must not have another other HTML tags or controls. 

If you want to use Master Pages use Web Content Form, otherwise use the Web Form.

Another nice feature in Visual Studio 2008 - is that in that in the top right corner of the Design window of the Web content page is a link to the Master page that this page is linked to.  Also, the “Split” view is cool.. you can now see the source and the design view tiled in the design area.

SearchWinDevelopment.com recently caught up with Rob Howard, who graced these pages in the Pre Silverlight Days. Howard rode the first blog wave at Microsoft, and has continued on the social networking trail as head of Telligent, provider of Community Server, a blogging application running on the ASP.NET platform.

Recently, Telligent has launched Graffiti, which takes a big conceptual step up the stream from blogging. Graffiti is a Content Management System [CMS], which is what people find they need when they bash about in the blogpond long enough.

Trouble with CMS is: There is a wide spectrum with not too many nodes along the way. You have the big vendors [Vignette, Interwoven] with rich products and pricey price tags on one spectra end .. and on the other end there is WordPress and Blogger with low cost and low features. Telligent sees opportunity.

Graffiti is a light weight CMS platform, Howard told us. It is a good fit in a more disparate environment, he indicated. He said many companies are beginning to field more than a single CMS type. They are supporting what he calls ‘niche focused publishing platforms.’

As with past Telligent efforts, Graffiti runs on ASP.NET. But this time, it also runs on Linux and Mac OS, and Mono. It supports various DBs, including MySQL.

Telligent has more in store. Besides upcoming new revs of Community Server, there is the Harvest Reporting suite due from the company. Said Howard, it rolls up 130 pre-built reports that let blogmeisters slice and dice their community data. Blogging may be a commodity item, yes. But the software the grows up around the blogging phenomenon  may be industries onto themselves. With its stabs at CMS and reporting, Telligent may point the way toward a trend.

Ruby was first at bat on Day 3 of the Lang.NET in Redmond. Wayne Kelly and Jon Lam both presenting. Jon Lam’s IronRuby session was a status update on where the project stands, and how Lam’s Microsoft group intends to get to 1.0. He said his group has debugging and stack back-traces working. In his Day 3 report, blogger Ted Neward comments that the time is ripe for a Ruby spec to appear.

Miguel de Icaza talked about Moonlight, how it happened, where it is today, and where it can go, according to a blog post by none other than John Lam. (Moonlight is an implementation of Silverlight for Linux.)

Among interesting elements uncovered as informal stand-ups during the event was Cobra, which is described as an imperative, object-oriented general-purpose language that runs on .NET and Mono. In a single language, it seeks to combine clean syntax as found in Python and Ruby, as well as static and dynamic typing, while exhibiting run-time performance akin to C# and C++. No small task! A nod to Harry Pierson for his link to Cobra.